Alia Bhatt gets grounded

Alia Bhatt's first film 'Student of the Year' had her tread on familiar ground. The teen romance was tailor-made for the 20-year-old debutante, who looked at ease in her trendy togs. A far cry from Highway, in which director-writer Imtiaz Ali has literally plucked the hothouse bloom from her designer universe and flung her on the dirt track. 

The film stars Alia with Randeep Hooda and the gruelling 42-day first schedule started on March 1. The team has been on the road since then, exploring the country from Delhi and Gurgaon to Faridabad, Jaipur, Bikaner, Faridkot and parts of Punjab, before heading to Himachal Pradesh, where they are stationed right now. Incidentally, the crew is predominantly male, and Alia has just two other girls for company as she takes public transport, shoots at real locations, and gets a taste of the 'other India'.

A source close to Alia told TOI, "The crew has been extremely protective of the girls, especially Alia, who was in for a bit of a culture shock at the kind of things she witnessed first-hand." Added her friend, "It has been a rough and exhausting schedule, but Alia is all wide-eyed at the world that has been opening up for her." Time to grow up?